Cheney Shrugs Off Contradictory 1994 Video Regarding Invading Iraq

CBS 5 contacted the Vice President's press office Wednesday, where a spokesperson reacted to the video by saying: "He was not Vice President at the time, it was after he was Secretary of Defense. I don't have any comment."

GOI: Cheney was against the Iraq invasion before he was for it. So what?? What difference does it make what position he held when he said it??? It doesn't change what he said.

The video isn't the only damning evidence against Cheney. The following is a statement made by the now Vice President Cheney as to why invading Iraq is a bad idea:

If you are going to go to war, let's send the whole group; let's make certain that we've got a force of sufficient size, as we did when we went into Kuwait, so that we do not suffer any more casualties than are absolutely necessary.

I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place.

What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?

I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq.

The President has made it clear that we are not interested in a permanent, or long-term U.S. ground presence, a garrison if you will, on the ground in the Gulf in the Saudi Arabian area.

GOI: They clearly knew what was going to happen after the invasion.

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